The Professionals

by Max Hennessy

  It didn’t seem to be the time to hang around counting and I was chiefly involved in keeping about six of them off my tail. I saw a Pup stagger across in front of me, its upper wing peeling back, then it fell away and I fired at a yellow and red Albatros but, because I had to dodge a stream of bullets from behind, I never saw what happened to it. For a minute or two the sky seemed to be full of aeroplanes, and I was ruddering frantically, my heart in my mouth, to avoid a collision. As I swung away, two Albatroses which had both been diving on me met head-on. I saw pieces of wood and metal fly off and a wheel whirr away, then the wings wrapped the two machines like shrouds as they seemed to pause, motionless in mid-air before they dropped out of sight below me. Bullets rattled and clicked against the Pup and one whined off the engine cowling so that I ducked instinctively, my heart thudding, then there was an almighty clang and the metal joystick was jerked out of my hand to whack against my knee. For a moment, I was terrified, wondering what had happened, then I realized that a bullet had hit the base of the stick and I was even more terrified, wondering how it had got there without smashing my leg. I snatched it back again and the Pup’s nose lifted and, as I got my wits working again, my knee still numbed and my hand tingling from the shock, I found myself facing an Albatros head-on and saw the winking flashes from its guns and fragments leaping from my centre section. This is too much, I thought, but I kept the machine going straight and level and it was the Albatros pilot who wavered and I got a burst at him and he swung away.

  The fight was scattered over an area two miles wide now, and had broken up into small circling groups, then as suddenly as it had begun it was over and I seemed to be alone in the sky. Over my shoulder I could seek a black spiral of smoke, and below me a wing was fluttering down like an autumn leaf, but there was no sign of the machine it belonged to. Two small fires burned on the ground below me.

  I was still shaking when I landed at Rochy. Three machines were down already and I saw Bull’s red face was a pasty purple-white.

  ‘My God,’ he kept saying. ‘My God!’ And he kept shuddering as though he couldn’t keep still.

  ‘Is this all?’ I asked.

  ‘Another one just coming in, sir,’ the flight-sergeant said, pointing.

  As I turned, I could see another Pup coming in over the trees, its motor poppling as it dropped to earth, its exhausts sending out puffs of smoke. Its wings rocked as it touched the uneven surface of the field and the mechanics swung it round towards the hangars. It looked like a sieve.

  ‘And another,’ someone called.

  Another Pup was dropping out of the clouds now, its descent cautious, and I saw Latta watching it with a bleak face and anxious eyes.

  ‘There’s something wrong,’ one of the mechanics said, and even as he spoke, the machine’s nose dropped and it swung round in a broken sort of curve to demolish a ruined cottage at the far side of the field. There was a moment’s stunned silence as the puff of dust rose into the air, then as the pilot scrambled clear I noticed a thrush singing in the apple orchard at the farm, filling the morning with its liquid song.

  Bull’s head was down again. ‘I wonder who they get for pallbearers when the last man’s killed,’ he said.

  There were several mechanics and fitters still waiting near the flapping Bessoneaux but no more aeroplanes came down out of the sky. Shortly afterwards, while we were still counting noses, Wing rang asking if anyone had shot down a yellow and red Albatros. I wasn’t very interested because they also said Catlow had been dragged from the wreckage of his machine and sent off to hospital shot through the head and dying. The month he’d had to wait for his safe posting had proved to be just too long.

  Munro turned up an hour later, with two walking sticks fashioned from a branch of a tree near a battery of heavy artillery where he’d crash-landed. His machine was a total wreck.

  ‘How many?’ was his first question.

  ‘How many what?’

  ‘Doon.’

  ‘Us or them?’

  ‘Och, who gi’es a damn aboot them? Us, laddie, us!’

  I shrugged. I was still frightened and a little numbed by what had happened. In all the time I’d been flying it was the worst disaster I’d been involved in and it took a lot of absorbing at nineteen.

  ‘Not counting you,’ I said, ‘five.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘How many do you want?’

  ‘Ah thought there’d be more. Who’s gone?’

  ‘Le Petit—’

  ‘Ah saw him go down.’

  ‘—Orgill, Catlow, Howarth, and Winton. And two more, including you, smashed up.’

  He sighed. ‘It turned oot tae be no’ such a bright idea o’ Latta’s as it seemed, did it? Where is he?’

  ‘In the office,’ I said. ‘On the telephone to Wing.’

  Munro managed a wan smile. ‘Ah expect he doesna’ ken whether tae resign or shoot himself,’ he said. ‘Who’re they gettin’ for pallbearer duties?’

  ‘Me, I expect,’ Bull said. ‘I seem to be the only new hand alive. We’ve only one flight left now, even if we all fly together. I wonder what they’ll do with us.’

  * * *

  We soon learned. There were no orders for the following day and I never saw Latta again. I heard the next morning that he’d left during the night and no one was very sure where for. I was still trying to push out of my mind what had happened the previous afternoon when the Recording Officer appeared. He was an ex-infantryman with a stiff leg called Longford who was old enough to be my father. He acted as adjutant, intelligence officer and father-confessor to the squadron and his attitude to pilots of my age was mildly paternal and disapproving. I was shaving when he appeared and he waited quietly until I’d wiped my face before speaking.

  ‘I suppose you realize,’ he said, ‘that with Orgill and Le Petit gone you’re senior captain now.’

  I didn’t understand for a moment what he was getting at and the thought was enough to fill me with awe. ‘I suppose I am,’ I agreed.

  ‘Well, in case it hasn’t occurred to you, with the Major gone that makes you officially acting C.O.’

  I jerked round to face him. ‘Me?’

  ‘Until someone turns up to replace him.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ I stared at him blank-faced. The thought of commanding the squadron – even a squadron consisting of only half a dozen pilots and the same number of battered machines – terrified me. But Longford had seen enough of the war to know just how to handle the situation.

  ‘You know what to do, don’t you?’ he said.

  ‘I suppose so. I’ve seen others do it.’

  ‘Better get on with it, then, lad. There’s plenty to do.’

  The C.O.’s office was still the holy of holies to me and I entered it nervously. I sat down in Latta’s chair, feeling that at any moment he’d pounce through the door and catch me, but Longford didn’t turn a hair and simply slapped down a whole bunch of papers in front of me and suggested I wade through them. I found I knew what to do with them and it began to dawn on me that I was more experienced in administration than I’d thought.

  ‘Does this mean I can issue orders?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re acting C.O.,’ Longford said.

  I looked up at him, beginning to recover a little now.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Then the first thing we’ll do is stop that damn silly cross-country running. There’s plenty for the chaps to do without that.’

  He looked at me gravely for a moment, then he grinned and I knew that he approved. So did the ground crews. When I went to the hangars I could see the relief on the faces there. That lunchtime an RE8 flew in, piloted by some bigwig from Wing.

  ‘Who’s the senior officer here?’ he asked.

  Longford jerked a hand in my direction. The bigwig, a colonel with a stiff collar and a handlebar moustache, stared at me. ‘I said “senior”,’ he said. ‘Not “junior”.’

  Longford’s face didn’t move a muscle. After eighteen months in the
trenches, he wasn’t afraid of bigwigs of any shape or size. He jerked a hand in my direction again. ‘That’s him, sir,’ he said. ‘Captain Falconer.’

  The bigwig stared at me as though he didn’t believe him. ‘Are you sure?’ he said.

  ‘Quite sure?’

  The bigwig looked at me. ‘How old are you, Falconer?’ he asked.

  ‘Nineteen, sir,’ I said.

  He blinked. ‘Good God,’ he said. ‘I see you’ve got the MC there. How much flying experience have you got?’

  ‘I came out in 1915, sir. I’ve also done a tour of instructing at home.’

  ‘How long have you been at your present rank?’

  ‘Since the beginning of the month, sir.’

  He blinked again and tugged at his moustache in embarrassment. ‘Well,’ he said eventually and his tones were more gentle now, ‘I came here to make the senior captain up to major, but I hardly think you’re old enough, Falconer. I’m afraid it’ll have to wait. I’ll have to think again.’

  He obviously did. That evening, we got a message that I was to lead what was left of the squadron back to England where we would pick up a new C.O., replacements and re-serviced machines.

  Munro got himself quietly drunk, almost speechless with delight. ‘Praise be tae the guid God,’ he said. ‘Ah’m gaein’ hame! Back tae Aberdeen!’

  * * *

  We flew off two days later, heading for Calais. It had taken two days to make sure three of the worst-damaged machines were in an airworthy state. The last battle had been little better than a massacre.

  As we left France, a vast blanket of cloud, stretching right to the western horizon, hid England from view. Halfway across, Munro fired a green Very light as a signal of distress and began a downwards glide until he eventually disappeared as a tiny speck through the cloud below. There was nothing I could do about it except hope he was safe. I had no radio and no means of warning anyone, and all I could do was work out with a hurried mental calculation of time and speed the approximate position where he’d gone into the sea.

  The rest of us landed safely at Lympne and I at once passed on my information about Munro’s position. No one had heard any call for rescue, however, and we had no idea what had happened to him until the next morning, when we learned he’d spotted a motor patrol boat and slapped his machine down alongside it. A few hours later he turned up in borrowed clothes with his own in a dripping sack. Our orders were to head for Sutton’s Farm near Hornchurch in Essex and Munro arrived by train and tender a few hours after we did.

  The sudden transfer from the strain of offensive patrols was as good as leave and we all started planning to do a little forgetting by going home as soon as we could. But the authorities were craftier than we were. They had brought us home to regroup, reorganize and retrain after the holocaust of Bloody April, and it didn’t mean we were going on leave. We weren’t entitled to it, and to keep us busy they had assigned us to the air defence of London. The Germans seemed to have stopped trying any longer with their Zeppelins, but the big Gothas they’d been building to replace them were expected over the capital at any moment, so once more I found myself working up newcomers while I was on the alert to stop the Germans.

  I didn’t enjoy being in the office much but someone had to do the work and I was still the senior officer. We were all delighted to be in England after the disastrous month in France, however, and there were always ways and means of sneaking home, especially if it happened to be reasonably near, as mine was. Only Munro wore a lugubrious face. He didn’t see much hope of getting to the north of Scotland on a week-end pass.

  As soon as the machines had been checked, we were placed on a standby basis from dawn to dusk, which pretty effectively stopped any sneaking through the fence and slipping off to London, and in fact, strict instructions were given out that nobody was to leave camp. A captain called Crozier turned up as temporary commanding officer and he immediately erected a triple-horn klaxon outside one of the huts and tried a practice alarm. As the raucous screech filled the air, we were all – mechanics and pilots together – supposed to race for the machines and get them into the air. For several days we tried it until we found we could get away in double-quick time. A few replacements turned up and I thought how young they were until I remembered I was no older. Little else seemed to be done. Crozier was waiting to take command of a squadron flying the new Camels and he wasn’t interested in us with our elderly Pups, and the squadron continued to bumble along in the same old inefficient way Latta had allowed.

  The confinement to camp seemed a little hard but then we realized that, since the Gothas were not expected after dark, we were free in the evenings, and London was within easy reach. Despite the gloom and the lighting restrictions there, theatres, restaurants and nightclubs were still open and for unattached people like me there were also girls. I met Sykes’ Cousin Charley once or twice. She gave me all the news of Sykes and, since she lived in London she also knew all the best shows.

  Most of the mechanics didn’t stay with us long. They were first-rate at their job and they were needed back in France where there was more urgency. We were only waiting for the arrival of the Gothas. A few new faces appeared, and then I saw one that I knew. It was Gumbell, the half-wit armourer we’d had before I’d left for France.

  ‘Well, sir,’ he said, giving me his big smile. ‘Fancy seeing you again!’

  ‘Hello, Gumbell,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Just back from France, sir,’ he grinned. ‘Only out there two months.’

  I didn’t have to think too hard to guess why. Some commanding officer, driven demented by complaints about his work, had clearly decided to get rid of him. He’d probably been shunted from one squadron to another before it had finally been decided to send him home.

  ‘What happened, Gumbell?’ I asked.

  ‘It was the C.O., sir. He shot off his own propeller.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘Yessir, and I got the blame. He said the interrupter gear wasn’t working properly.’

  I made a mental note to keep a sharp eye on him.

  For a long time nothing happened. We heard that the Gothas had dropped bombs on Folkestone and Sheerness but somehow the authorities had forgotten us and no one informed us until it was all over and only a few machines from training units and acceptance parks went up against them. They were hopelessly outmatched by the three moveable machine guns on the Gothas.

  I kept a careful watch on Gumbell, checking my guns and filling my ammunition belts myself. The weather was improving all the time and we knew we could expect an alarm at any moment. Then Crozier announced that he had to go to Hendon about his posting and proposed to use my machine because his own was unserviceable.

  I was indignant because I had taken great care with mine and had checked and re-checked it. Crozier smiled.

  ‘That’s why I’m taking it,’ he said. ‘I know it won’t let me down. Take Waterford’s machine. He’s sick.’

  I took over Waterford’s Pup and inspected it disgustedly, certain it wasn’t as good as mine. When I took it up I found, as I’d expected, that it hadn’t been as well tuned, but there wasn’t much I could do about it except put right a few obvious things then I went to join the others in deckchairs by the huts. Crozier’s treachery was still rankling but the sun was warm and I began to doze. I could hear Munro trying to explain the old chestnut to Bull – ‘The finest Keeng’s Eenglish,’ he was saying, ‘is always spoken in Scotland. An’ particularly in Abairrdeen.’

  ‘And I suppose,’ Bull observed sarcastically, ‘that you’re an expert exponent of it.’

  Munro sounded surprised at the question. ‘Och aye,’ he said. ‘An’ why no’?’

  I was just trying to work out who it was had first started the claim when the alarm went. As the klaxon roared I almost leapt into the air.

  We climbed away south towards the Thames. Crozier had worked no plans out and we went off haphazardly. I arrived somewhere over So
uthend at 16,500 feet and flew along the course of the Thames. After a while I saw antiaircraft shells bursting at a point which seemed to be over the east fringe of London, and I realized there were several aeroplanes hanging in the sky there. Since they were in good formation and looked big, I had no doubt they were what I was after, and because I had taken the precaution of climbing as high as I could I had plenty of time and plenty of altitude. As the formation came past just below me I dived on the rearmost machine.

  Even as I closed in I saw the bombs fall away. There seemed to be two or three large ones and several small ones. I saw them drop clear and diminish quickly in size as they headed towards the hazy blue-grey ground below, rocking slightly as they fell. As they disappeared from sight, I was closing fast on the rearmost machine. I fired at close range, but because I’d been watching the bombs fall, I’d misjudged the width of the enormous wings and I suddenly found I was far too close. I levelled off violently, almost hitting the Gotha’s wingtip, holding my breath in horror and pressing back in my seat as I dragged at the stick. The swing away was so violent I thought my wings would collapse, but they held, and it was the seat-bearer that went instead and suddenly I found myself three inches lower than I had been and only just able to peer over the edge of the cockpit along the gun.

  I hitched myself up with difficulty and climbed above the slower-flying Gothas again to get a good look at them. They were long slender machines with high tails and rudder and aileron extensions. They were painted a mottled grey-brown and appeared to have three sets of struts on either side, and as far as I could make out were powered by two huge motors. There seemed to be a crew of three – a pilot and two machine-gunners – though there was probably also someone else inside that vast fuselage doing the navigating through a hole in the floor.